GitHub Actions allow building Continuous Integration pipeline for testing purposes.
GitHub Actions are visible through the Actions tab in a GitHub repository, are triggered automatically for each push or pull-request and run also in forks.
For further information about GitHub Actions, see the official documentation.
The GitHub Action Cache allows reusing files between jobs and workflows. The content of the cache cannot be cleaned on purpose, but is cleaned when the hash of the files used for the key changes. This action is used in order to cache the maven dependencies.
Unfortunately, at the moment it is not possible to reuse some steps on multiple jobs. This feature is a nice to have, since it would be possible to reuse the steps that are common to all the test jobs. The feature has been already requested by the community, and it's being discussed here:
- https://github.community/t/reusing-sharing-inheriting-steps-between-jobs-declarations/16851
- actions/runner#438
The GitHub Actions dev team has already introduced the composite run steps, see:
- https://github.com/actions/runner/blob/main/docs/adrs/0549-composite-run-steps.md
- https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/actions/creating-actions/creating-a-composite-run-steps-action
However, composite 'actions' are not supported yet, see:
It is currently not possible to restart single jobs. For more information see the following issues on GitHub Actions Community that are tracking this feature request:
- https://github.community/t/ability-to-rerun-just-a-single-job-in-a-workflow/17234
- https://github.community/t/re-run-jobs/16145/
To cope with this missing feature, the Retry GitHub Action is used. This action allows retrying a failed step for a fixed amount of attempts.